Thirty years after they sang for the first time in pop culture history, Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri Spartan cheerleaders remain one of Saturday night live The most iconic (and deliciously unhinged) sketches.
Ferrell, 58, and Oteri, 63, were five weeks old. SNL races when they burst into a November 11, 1995 episode dressed as the relentlessly optimistic Spartans. As outsiders who weren’t part of the official high school team, Craig (Ferrell) and Arianna (Oteri) still wore the uniform as they proudly cheered at chess games, bake sales, and even a theater performance. Titanic – wherever the spirit was scarce.
Written and performed by Oteri and Ferrell (with writer Paula Pell joining later), the almost 20 sketches were published until 1999, giving Us timeless chants like “Who’s that Spartan in my tepee?” (“It’s me! It’s me!”) and characters we still dress up as on Halloween, even today.
Ready? OK! Keep scrolling to see Oteri and Pell’s look back at the Spartan Cheerleaders’ unforgettable legacy:
Saturday Night Live’s hosts and musical guests usually take the spotlight each week, but sometimes more famous faces steal the show. Thank you! You have successfully subscribed. Subscribe to newsletters Please enter a valid email. Subscribe By signing up, I agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive emails from […]
Who was involved?
Oteri and Ferrell dreamed of the Spartans in their first week SNL while trampling the boards of the essay. Oteri had been a high school cheerleader who admitted she had “no team spirit,” which inspired her to imagine kids who weren’t part of the team but “still cheered because it was in them, they were born to do it.”
“I never cared if we won or lost,” Oteri recalls exclusively for Us weekly of his own lack of adolescent spirit. “For me it was just a way of acting and making noise and feeling like I was good at something because I wasn’t a great athlete or a great student. I was generally mediocre at everything. And [back then]you didn’t have to be a gymnast or a dancer, so I thought, ‘Oh, I can do these moves!’ You’re on stage somehow, you have a nice uniform. And if our team lost, I would just say, ‘Even so, there will still be a party, right?’”
Pell, however, instantly connected with the sketch for different reasons, telling him Us that she “never” formed her own high school team despite auditioning every year.
“I was a person who tried to be a cheerleader every year. Every summer, I worked on my spring setback,” she says. “But I was a little fat kid, so I never, ever did cheerleading. Not once. I was the one holding the gum in the mints and the bags, and I was in the stands. All the cheerleaders were my best friends, so I would sit there, being like their mom up there, like a dance mom. I knew everyone was cheering. So when they asked me to do it [write for the Spartans]I just remember saying, ‘My God, you have no idea how [much] This is my thing.’”
Why do we remember it?
The Spartans were the most lovable losers: sweet, sincere, and full of misplaced confidence, putting a hilarious spin on the teenage experience.
“High school is all about drama and that’s what made me laugh,” Oteri explains. “It was like, ‘Oh my God, are you saying I have split ends?!’ Everything was so dramatic and the problems are so big that you will die if it doesn’t happen. “I think everyone can relate to that.”
Key details
Each Spartans sketch had its signature elements: spirit fingers, Arianna clashing with her off-screen enemy Alexis, and “perfect animation.” Of course, Craig and Arianna’s sensibilities were a little… off, as with their tournament riff on “Proud Mary”: They sang “Bowling, bowling, bowling down the river” while he mocked her, and then ended with a breathless plea: “Stop the spousal abuse!”
It’s true that Ferrell, Oteri and Pell had a great time behind the scenes.
“We were in that little office crying with laughter,” Pell warmly recalls, confessing that they sometimes lengthened the creation process to avoid moving on to a more stressful sketch. “You’re all supposed to write various things that night. And we’d be there laughing a lot and clapping… And then the other people who wanted to write with us, actors or writers, would knock and say, ‘Are you almost done?’ And we thought, ‘Oh my God, we’re getting there!’”
The hosts also loved joining in on the fun, from Tom Hanks (like the Spartan angelic spirit) and Jim Carrey (an exchange student cheerleader) Pamela Anderson (in Baywatch mode) and Rosie O’Donnell (above). It was the kind of sketch that came with a sense of security once it became a recurring series.
“We really wanted to tap into the joy, because we knew that if we had to write the unknown, it was always more stressful,” Pell says. “AND [Spartans] “It was pure joy.”
The aftermath
The Spartan Cheerleaders not only caused laughter: they became a phenomenon, promoting SNL After a handful of mediocre seasons.
Pell remembers that it all felt pretty “smeared” when she, Oteri and Ferrell first joined the cast and writers’ room. “When they hired me, [creator] lorne [Michaels] He was saying, ‘The show has had to be a Phoenix many times, where it falls and then rises again. And this is one of those times. That’s why we got rid of so many people and now we’re starting over.”
Oteri adds: “Everyone was very excited, nervous and grateful. We were all like children. We were all like excited children, and for us to go anywhere all they had to do was feed us food. Because we were all getting out of the situation, not being poor, but struggling.”
Pell admits that while the rookies initially “had no idea what we were doing,” they gravitated toward writing the character and drew inspiration from their own lives, something that quickly paid off.
When Oteri and Ferrell made the cover of Rolling Stone in 1997 with Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher and Chris Kattan as one of The night at the Roxbury house Butabi Brothers, it was clear that their infectious spirit had spread beyond Studio 8H.
“It was like, ‘Wow, SNL is back. We’re bringing him back!’” Pell exclaims.
Oteri, for his part, realized success much later: “I remember going to a kids’ swim party. They were doing the whole ‘Taco, burrito, what’s coming out of your Speedo?’ health!” she says.
There was also an out-of-body experience at Bed Bath & Beyond.
“I was in Los Angeles and I was waiting in line, and they had these little round screens with magnets. And I looked and there was a magnet of me and Will cheerleading! I wanted so badly to tell the people in line, like, ‘Listen to me: That’s me! That’s me!'”
The legacy of the Spartans continues today. As recently as 2022, SNL host Miles Teller shared a childhood video of him and his sister playing Spartan Cheerleaders.
“All those Halloweens where people dressed up as us,” Oteri says, “is really the sweetest tribute I could ever imagine.”
A new perspective
The trio got “a lot” from their labs, Oteri says. “I’ve always loved playing people who don’t know how bad things are for them.”
As Oteri officially left SNL In 2000, the comedian says that she would have “loved to stay longer” and continue creating characters.
“That was my dream job and I always felt like it was perfect for me and that I had more to give,” he tells us. He adds that, looking back, he wishes he’d known he wouldn’t be returning for another season so he could have a proper send-off.
“It is very important to say goodbye and I was very surprised to have made that decision. [to exit the show]and I really wish I had said goodbye,” he says. Us. “Because there’s a difference between leaving and running away. And I think saying goodbye is leaving. That’s what I’m sorry for.”
As for why she left, Oteri says it’s a “hard” thing to answer: “It can be a tough place. That’s no secret. And I felt like I had to take care of myself. I just felt like I had to,” she adds.
Saturday Night Live has catapulted the careers of many of today’s most popular comedians, including Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey and Adam Sandler. Murphy, for his part, appeared as a cast member from 1980 to 1984. He then became a lucrative movie star, but tension between him and the show arose later. […]
Pell remained a writer in SNL until 2013. And although she, Oteri and Ferrell were present at the show’s 50th anniversary special earlier this year, a Spartan ovation was nowhere to be seen or heard. Pell says it was a “difficult” decision to determine which past sketches would be honored, as who would attend remained up in the air until the end.
“I was involved in [SNL 50]because I wrote things, but I wasn’t actually in the meetings where they discussed [what to do]”he says. “They didn’t know [who was coming] for a while, so everything was unsafe. …It would have been fun if we did.”
Where are they now?
since they SNL Days, Ferrell has become one of Hollywood’s biggest comedy stars, appearing in blockbusters like Presenter, eleven and january You are cordially invited. Oteri appeared And so and has scary movie 6 and a guest spot on NBC Season 2 The happy place next. Pell created and starred in girls5eva and The Mapleworth Murdersand is scheduled for a 2026 remake of The suburbs with Keke Palmer. “I play a lesbian soldier who helps solve the murders. [in town]”he jokes. Consider Us tuned in!